Free The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson Page A

back to school,” he said. “I got in all that trouble for a dollar fifty cents.”

    George hadn’t really thought his revenge scheme through to completion. He held out hope that his father would change his mind. George would spring the news about Inez on him only if his father didn’t come around. The two of them kept their secret through the spring and into the summer, when George went to New York like a lot of college students from the South to make spending money for school.
    He worked at a dry cleaner’s in Flatbush and lived with the aunts who had sent money to his grandmother, the root doctor in Ocala. Toward the end of the summer, he wrote his father: I have my money for my books and everything. I bought what clothing I’ll need. Are you going to be able to pay my tuition?
    Lil George didn’t know it, but the people back home had been grumbling in Big George’s ear. The father had already done more than he had to. Nobody else was spending all that money for school. None of them had gone off to college, and they had made out alright. Their kids were working in the groves and bringing in good money. What was Lil George doing? His father wrote him back: No, I just won’t be able to do it. You’ll have to work, this year, and we’ll see how things are next year .
    The summer was almost over. The semester would be starting soon. George had run out of time. He realized his dream was over. He wrote his father again. He wanted to get back at him now: Well, that’s alright, don’t worry about it ’cause I’m married anyhow. I’m married to Inez .
    George waited for the fireworks. But they never came. He caught the bus back home, and the old people who hadn’t seen him in months recognized him as he walked from the bus station. They called out to him from their front porches.
    “Hey, ain’t that Lil George Starling?”
    “Yes, ma’am, this is me.”
    “Come here, boy. Lord have mercy, what is wrong with you? You done gone plumb fool. They tell me you done jumped up and married that Cunningham girl. And your daddy said, he was here gettin’ ready to send you back to school.”
    George couldn’t speak. The old people went on.
    “ ’Cause your daddy said he was gettin’ ready to send you back to school, and, before he know anything, you come writing him about you done got married.”
    The word had spread all across Egypt town, and everybody knew about the ingrate son who had ruined his chance at college, marrying some girl from the wrong side of town.
    Dog, the ole man done tricked me , George thought to himself. He knew how they talked. And in the old people’s sweet scolding, he could hear how the story got repackaged in the telling, people in town with nothing better to do, who never had the chance at college themselves, maybe never tried or even wanted to go, delighting in the confusion and goading Big George over it.
    “George, where is that boy? Is he going to school?”
    “No, you know what that devilish boy done? I’m here gettin’ ready to send him back to school, and here he come writing me the other day tellin’ me about he married.”
    “Well, I declare! You mean to tell! Now, I know that boy ain’t done nothin’ like that! And hard as you workin’ trying to send him to school!”
    And so it went. If the father had ever intended on sending him back, he now had a publicly acceptable excuse for not doing so, and he had come out the hero in the deal.
    As for Lil George, no colleges near Eustis nor any state universities in Florida, for that matter, admitted colored students. The closest colored colleges were hours away. He had a wife to support now. So he would have to do precisely what his father had intended all along. It looked as if he might never make it back to school.
    And he would have to live with vows made in anger for the rest of his life. It would not be happy because he knew and she knew how it had come to be. But they would both try to make the best of it now that the